Amazon Labor Struggles & Solidarity in Germany

As platforms have been growing in societal and political-economic power, they have also become increasingly integral in mediating our social and labor relations. These platforms reshape these while reproducing neoliberal trends – from algorithmic management to the further normalization of precarious labor relations, first and foremost through the gig economy. One of the largest and most powerful platforms that has exponentially grown over the last decade has been Amazon. Focusing on Amazon warehouse workers in Germany, in its biggest market outside of the US and centering labor’s perspective, I ask: what are the different forms by which Amazon warehouse workers form solidarity and express their agency given the variation of industrial relations and its decentralized network of warehouses in Europe?

Based on original qualitative fieldwork, I investigate the working conditions and forms of labor organization of warehouse workers across Germany. Grounded in a critical political economy perspective, I examine the structural power, associational and institutional power of workers according to Erik Olin Wright and Beverly Silver. I argue those warehouse workers who are organized along hypertaylorized circulation lines and divisions of labor, supervised by the social and technological panopticon, are dialectically able to grow their associational and workplace power precisely because they are location-based. In the case of German they have, however, been unable to successfully grow their institutional power through a collective bargaining agreement, as Amazon continues to argue that works councils are sufficient and rejects coming to the table with unions.